The lab was quiet at three in the morning. Too quiet for a building that should have been asleep.
Brendon sat hunched over his desk, lights dimmed, monitors humming, tools spread across the bench in ordered chaos. The Omnitrix glowed faintly at his wrist, pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat.
For days, the memory of the warehouse raid gnawed at him. Hammer hadn't sent his best, only a test strike, and Brendon had been barely fast enough to stop it. That was the truth clawing at the back of his mind: Morpher was powerful, but Brendon was slow. Brendon was fragile.
Hammer wouldn't underestimate him again.
So Brendon didn't just plan. He transformed.
The dial spun, locked, and green light swallowed him whole.
Greymatter stood on the desk, no bigger than a rodent, his black eyes glimmering with manic brilliance. The lab was suddenly a cathedral of possibility. Circuits hummed like symphonies. Equations unraveled themselves in his mind, revealing elegant solutions to questions Brendon hadn't even asked yet.
"Finally," Greymatter whispered in a voice sharp and quick. "Now we can really work."
The Serums
The first project was crude but promising: serums. Brendon had long avoided direct bio-enhancements — the Omnitrix gave him aliens, what more did he need? But Greymatter saw the gap: Brendon's base form. Weak. Mortal. A soft target when the dial timed out.
So he brewed.
Adrena-Boost: a glowing blue vial derived from a diluted Kineceleran metabolic model. Ten minutes of reflexes just shy of superhuman, followed by a crash of exhaustion that left his limbs heavy as lead.
Cryo-Skin: nanite-infused serum mimicking Petrosapien density. When injected, his skin hardened for fifteen minutes, shrugging off blades and small arms fire. The drawback: stiffness, his movements slowed as though wading through water.
Neuro-Surge: the most dangerous. A synthesis of Galvan neuron-boosters, designed to spike cognitive processing speed. For thirty minutes, his brain would run in overdrive, seeing solutions before problems finished forming. Side effect? Migraines that could leave him incapacitated for hours.
Greymatter studied the glowing rack of vials with a wide, toothy grin. "Not perfect. Not safe. But good enough."
He capped the case carefully, sealing them in foam padding. Three weapons for when the watch failed him.
The Linger Effect
The second breakthrough came by accident.
Greymatter worked until dawn, cycling through transformations — Wildmutt for sensory mapping, Diamondhead for crystal lattice studies, XLR8 for kinetic analysis. The Omnitrix's timer usually snapped him back after ten minutes, but tonight he pressed harder. Testing limits.
He stayed as Greymatter for nearly an hour before the green light finally forced him human again.
And when he did… something lingered.
He blinked at the code on the screen. Normally, the equations he wrote as Greymatter became opaque the second he returned to human form, like waking from a dream. But tonight? The clarity remained. The formulas weren't alien gibberish anymore. They were his.
Brendon's hands shook. "I can still… understand it."
Not just that. His mind raced, faster than it should. He spotted redundancies in MaskNet's code, streamlined them in seconds. He re-checked the serum formulas and improved their stability with ease. His brain was humming at a level beyond anything he'd known as a human.
And then there was his body.
He stood, flexing his hands. A subtle strength hummed beneath his skin, a faint echo of the aliens he'd worn tonight. His reflexes sharper, muscles more responsive. He wasn't XLR8, not even close, but he was faster than he should be. Stronger.
A lingering strength. A residue.
The Omnitrix pulsed green, as if acknowledging his discovery.
Brendon swallowed hard. "So that's the game, huh? Not just borrowing powers… keeping a taste of them."
The implications staggered him. Ben 10,000 had been a myth — someone who could wield alien abilities without ever transforming. Brendon was nowhere near that. But tonight, he'd taken the first step toward it.
The Price of Genius
Morning sun crept through the blinds by the time Brendon leaned back in his chair, human once more. His skull throbbed, a low pressure building behind his eyes. The aftershock of stretching Greymatter's form too long.
But the cost was worth it. For the first time, he didn't feel defenseless in his own skin.
He walked to the mirror, studying himself. Dark circles hung under his eyes, but his gaze was sharper, more calculating. His reflection felt like a stranger — not quite Brendon, not quite Morpher, something in between.
He tapped the Omnitrix, voice low. "Hammer wants a fight? Fine. But this time… I'll be ready."
The watch glowed in answer.
Brendon opened the case of serums, sliding it into his jacket. His final preparations were done. A scientist's toolkit. A soldier's edge.
Somewhere deep down, though, a whisper gnawed at him: how many more lines would he cross before he stopped being Brendon at all?